To the Ends of the Earth
by Elodie.Haven
Summary: She dies, but she never leaves him.


**To the Ends of the Earth**

It's almost an accident the first time he falls asleep with her in his arms.

It's the day winter begins to morph into spring, and soft golden light spills onto the hospital floor, illuminating her translucent skin and halo of shorn hair. His allotted thirty minutes of visitation time come and go, and there's an ever-growing pile of neglected paperwork on his desk back home, but he can't quite bring himself to leave her. And then he notices that she's shivering beneath her blankets, and he pushes his chair aside, sits down on the edge of her bed, and wraps his arm around her shoulders. His hand presses against her side, feeling the splay of bones beneath his fingers, and he reminds himself to tell the sisters to make sure she's eating.

Her head fits against his neck like a corresponding puzzle piece and when her eyes close he can feel each of her breaths against his skin, a feeling more reassuring than he ever could have dreamed.

The shadows the ward's furniture casts lengthen and the room descends into twilight, and eventually he stops worrying about the scandal it will cause if someone sees them, and falls asleep with her fragile form pressed against his.

The next morning, he feeds her breakfast bite by bite, her arms to weak to hold the bowl and spoon herself.

…

After weeks of dreaming of his fatal mistake, he can almost remember the first time he laid eyes on her. But no matter how much he tortures himself, her features that day, fuller and pinker and healthier, remain a blur, while the rich flow of her waist-length hair and the shrill pitch of her screams are branded into his mind.

"Forgive me," he whispers into her hair.

…

Her death is like her life—short, agonizing, and filled with a burning, blazing, passionate love. He holds her hand as it grows cold and slack, and then he kisses her goodbye. Somehow, the sword Javert is holding to his back is much less frightening than the thought of her in an unmarked pauper's grave.

"I will follow your soul to the ends of the earth," he breathes into her ear. But he knows she won't lead him quite that far—only to Montfermeil, and a child with her sky blue eyes.

…

In his dreams, he is back at the factory, and this time he does not close the door quickly enough and the foreman stumbles and she falls into his arms and he doesn't let her go.

He wakes with a gasp so loud that his daughter comes rushing into his room.

"What's wrong, Papa?"

"Nothing, my darling, nothing."

But the next day he makes the journey back to Montreuil-sur-Mer again, this time with Cosette beside him, and shows her the communal grave that he left her mother to.

"Who's buried here?"

He wants to tell her, but he can't find the words, can't find the way to turn the tragic story into something appropriate for an eleven-year-old, can't figure out how to describe the fierce light of her soul or the whisper of her lips against his.

…

He can feel her watching eyes every so often—when Cosette first manages to read a Bible passage out loud without help, when he introduces her daughter to the secluded house and overgrown garden on Rue Plumet, when Cosette wakes up one morning whimpering in pain and panic with her nightgown soaked in blood, when a stray bullet at the barricade misses him by a centimeter, when he sees Cosette in her lace wedding gown and tries to find something, anything, to say.

And sometimes at the little moments, when he's shirtless and sweat-soaked as he works in the garden, and he can almost feel her blushing and placing her hand against the muscles of his back, or when Cosette throws back her head and laughs at the Luxembourg, and he's so sure, for a minute, that he sees her smile in response. Sometimes, he swears that she's curled up beside him in bed in the half-second before sleep overcomes his half-dreamed reality.

…

He's not surprised to see her on the last night of his life, seated on the floor of his apartment with her legs curled under her and her hair, long once again, falling free of its pins and her dress slipping off her shoulder just as it did in real life—he's not surprised to feel her palm against his fever-flushed skin as Cosette sobs in her husband's arms and his soul soars to heaven and beyond.

…

She is glowing again, with a full set of pearly white teeth and hair that looks like sunlight made solid.

He's seated cross-legged on the floor outside their house and she's lying beside him with her head in his lap, and they watch Cosette back in Paris, older now than her mother, nursing a newborn boy with his name.

She sits up, graceful as ever, and slips her hands under his shirt, tracing with a feather-light touch the unblemished skin on his chest where his brand used to be as she kisses him. His arms wrap around her instinctively and he pulls her closer.

"Did you sense me watching you?"

"Always."


End file.
